Denver and the West

Biden calls Romney 'out of touch' during Greeley visit

GREELEY — Vice President Joe Biden clobbered Mitt Romney's debate performance Wednesday in this working class Republican stronghold, saying the GOP presidential hopeful is out of touch, elitist and has a budget plan that will only hurt "average" Americans.

Borrowing from President Barack Obama's line at the presidential debate Tuesday, Biden called Romney's budget plan "sketchy" and said it wasn't just the "Swiss bank accounts and the Cayman Islands" that made the Republican presidential challenger out of touch, but that he was in a "1950s time warp."

Biden said the budget plan slashes Medicaid spending, money for Pell Grants and turns Medicare into a "voucher" system.

"This was real," he said. "If it weren't so tragic, it would almost be funny."

This was the vice president's first stop in Colorado this campaign season. Obama has traveled to Colorado 13 times in his presidency — ten of those times were this year.

Much of Biden's 26-minute speech was devoted to propping up Obama after last night's second presidential debate, after which his campaign claimed victory.

"How about ... last night?" Biden said to the crowd of 1,100 gathered. "You all saw the man that I have sat with every day on an average of four to six hours a day. A man of principle, a man of gumption, a man of steady hand."

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Romney's campaign also claimed victory in the debate. They held a counter "welcome to Greeley" rally with Craig Romney, one of Mitt Romney's sons, timed directly after Biden took the stage.

"Vice President Biden's recent comment that the middle class has been "buried" for the last four years is exactly right," the Romney campaign said in a statement. "The middle class has suffered under President Obama, is facing $16 trillion in debt and needs a real recovery."

The Greeley crowd out for Biden reflected the working-class town with older white voters and a lot of Latino youth. Many of the hundreds of people huddled together in wind-whipping chill awaiting security clearance to get into Island Grove Regional Park were energized about the president's debate performance.

"It was more like the guy we've known him to be," Larry Benson, a Johnstown resident, said of Obama. "I thought once again he earned my respect and appreciation ... I sleep well at night thinking he is in Washington working for me."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, one of the speakers who introduced Biden, was wandering around the Greeley crowd in giant white cowboy hat.

He said Romney's statements on energy at the debate were untrue. Romney said domestic oil production on federal lands is down and numbers are only higher because production on private lands is high.

"Frankly, he misspoke and simply forgot the reality of where we are today," Salazar said. The Interior Department oversees domestic energy production on federal lands. "We are producing more oil in the last three years on federal lands by 13 percent than what was produced in the last few years in the Bush administration."

These numbers are a three-year average, and include the temporary administration-ordered moratorium on deep water drilling after the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, Salazar said.

Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma who represents Greeley, issued a statement saying he hoped Biden learned that "discriminating against oil and gas is the wrong approach."

Biden's speech was also meant to target voter groups the Obama campaign hopes will pull him over to victory in Colorado: women and Latino voters.

Twenty days from election day, polls show Obama and Romney statistically tied in this battleground state with nine electoral votes.

"I don't care what your position is on immigration, but self deportation?" Biden said. "Oh every 13-year-old get up and move."

Romney has said he would push a comprehensive immigration reform plan through Congress in his first year of office, if elected.

Biden also touched on the one line in the debate gaining steam and punch in the social media world. At the debate when Romney was asked about women's pay, he talked about how he sought women to fill government positions as Massachussetts governor, asking women's groups to help him fill jobs and "they brought us whole binders full of women."

Biden said Wednesday, "he got a direct question about equal pay and he started talking about binders."

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